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I was recently looking at my Amazon wishlist, it has quite a few books on it, and wondering when, if ever, I’d get around to purchasing and reading them. See, I made a deal with myself, and I’ve mostly kept it, that I won’t buy anymore new books until I finish all the ones I already have on my shelves. But, it doesn’t seem to matter how many of the books I take off the shelf and read there are always unread ones sitting on the shelves waiting for their turn. If reading wasn’t so enjoyable the task might be Sisyphean…

So, I decided to sit down and see just how many books I have to read before I can get to those new ones… It took awhile but here it is:

Roughly, I didn’t count a lot of the genre fiction collections I have lying around (Dune, Stross, Stevenson, Weeks, etc…) If you want to get a glimpse at what I’m interested in go ahead and click through to the spreadsheet, I didn’t list authors but some simple googling should lead you to these books.

Anyone have any suggestions on whittling this down to something manageable?

I did quite a bit of reading in the last year. I’m hoping to do just as much if not more this year!

January (6)
John Dies at the End by David Wong
Our Gleaming Bones Unrobed by Grant Loveys
Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen
Bad Machinery: The Case of Team Spirit by John Allison
Boom! by Thomas Richard Harry
This Book has Spiders in it by David Wong

February (6)
The Enlightenment Vision by Stuart Jordan
Tarzan the Centennial Celebration by Scott Tracy Griffin
The Adventurer’s Handbook by Mick Conefrey
Budget Travel through Space and Time by Albert Goldbarth
Not Buying It by Judith Levine
In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation by Melinda L. Pash

March (3)
It’s Even Worse than it Looks by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
The Girl in the Flammable Skit by Aimee Bender

April (2)
Overheated by Andrew Guzman
Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

May (4)
The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

June (2)
City of Quartz by Mike Davis
Faust Eric by Terry Pratchett

July (1)
Escape Velocity by Mark Dery

August (1)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

September (1)
Alas, Poor Yorick by Ryan North

October (12)
All Your Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
The Son I Never Had by Kevin Wolf
Make me a Sandwich by Jemma Salume
Moses and Bean: School Bus Sex Ed by Matt and Jeanie Bryan
All Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Men Who Lost America by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
Skin Deep: Orientations by Kory Bing
Please Don’t Give Up (1 of 4) by Thien Pham
The Adventures of the 19XX: Rise of the Black Faun by Paul Martinez
Murder and Magic by Randall Garrett

November (3)
Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett
Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

December (1)
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Total: 42

If I have any reading goals for 2014 it is to complete book review books in the month I get them, to read more “classic” texts, and to finally read through J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and maybe, maybe Spengler’s Decline of the West.

Congratulations to Patty for winning the last book in this year’s Summer Giveaway! She has a choice of:

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (signed)

Selected Poems of Robert Frost

Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss

Overheated by Andrew Guzman

Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

Thanks to everyone who participated this year. I hope you stick around! All the prizes will go out next weekend as long as I can get to the Post Office on time and it hasn’t randomly closed for some reasons (you never know with the USPS…)

Congratulations to our third winner, Felix, he’ll have his choice of book from the list below:

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (signed)

Selected Poems of Robert Frost

Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss

Overheated by Andrew Guzman

Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

The giveaway marches on! Leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win a book of your choice from the list. Below is another short review for one of the books in the giveaway, The Myth of Persecution. This review originally appeared in the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Review.

Candida Moss’ new book, The Myth of Persecution is going to raise hackles in the small, exclusive halls of Christian history. Why? Because it attacks one of the foundational tenets of early Christianity: the persecution and martyrdom of early converts to the new religion. Ask any Christian, Protestant, Catholic, and other and the conversation will eventually turn to the persecution of Christians, contemporary and historical, almost always accompanied by a shout out to Nero, and sometimes Diocletian. This piece of historical trivia is always presented as a given and no one ever disputes the “fact” that before the ascension of Constantine to the Imperial crown Christians were singularly and systematically persecuted by Pagan Rome. Dr. Moss begs to differ. In this exhaustively researched yet accessible book Dr. Moss presents the thesis that this ‘persecution’ of the primitive church is a myth created by later government sanctioned, early Christian sects and used as method to impose orthodoxy, attack sectarian opponents, and bolster their own doctrinal claims. The popularity of martyr stories among the laity only fed the use of the myth and their exaggeration into the grotesque stories we have today, Dr. Moss’ book lays bare that truth and presents us with the opportunity to instead of retelling myth begin to explore the actual history of this era.